Sheriff, docs tout gun buyback programs

BOSTON -- Describing gun buybacks as an "injury prevention effort," Middlesex Sheriff Peter Koutoujian said Tuesday he wanted to see the programs run by local law enforcement expand into regional collaborations that simultaneously cover counties, states or the country as a whole.

"We have a national drug takeback day. We should have a national gun takeback day," Koutoujian said at a State House advocacy day hosted by the American College of Surgeons' Massachusetts Chapter.

Koutoujian said thousands of people die each year in unintentional shootings.

The advocacy day focused on a "surgical response to gun violence," with doctors discussing various prevention and preparation efforts.

Dr. Michael Hirsh, a pediatric surgeon, said he believes gun buyback programs -- in which people turn in unwanted firearms to police in exchange for money or gift certificates -- help reduce rates of gun injuries.

Hirsh helped establish the Goods for Guns buyback program in Worcester, a collaboration among the city's police department, UMass Memorial Medical Center and the Worcester County district attorney.

"The total cost...for doing gun buybacks, for the last 14 years, of $149,000 is less than taking care of four gunshot wound victims in our hospital system," Hirsh said.

Advertisement

He said the money saved prompted Fallon Community Health Plan last year to view the buyback initiative as a managed care program and help fund it.

When Koutoujian first started working with his local police departments to launch buyback programs, he said "people didn't really understand the value."

"They'd say it's not going to drive down crime, it's not going to affect, you know, gang violence or robberies," the sheriff said. "I'd say, that's not the point, people. That's not the point that we're talking about. Don't be misled. We can do so much more to make your community safer and healthier."

Koutoujian spoke at the American College of Surgeons' Massachusetts Chapter advocacy day at the State House on Tuesday.

In three years, 450 unwanted guns have been collected through Middlesex County buybacks, Koutoujian said. Framingham will hold its first buyback next month.

"Based on the success of these events with our partners, it's my hope that we'll someday, someday ... create a much larger effort so that we have regional gun buybacks so the synergies of each one can benefit each other -- that's what we saw when we did our last one in Middlesex -- and have it countywide or statewide or New England-wide or countrywide," Koutoujian said.

Lawmakers who addressed the surgeons group called for action at the federal level to address gun violence.

"Massachusetts is doing as best as we possibly can on a statewide basis, but if we're going to cut down on gun violence, we have to cut down on trafficking of guns coming in from other states," said Rep. David Linsky, a Natick Democrat and former assistant district attorney in Middlesex County. "While we have strong gun laws in Massachusetts, our neighbor in Vermont for example has some of the weakest gun laws in the country, and there is a regular trafficking of guns for heroin down I-91 from Vermont to Springfield and back and forth."

A Massachusetts gun-safety law passed in 2014 required the development of an online portal to log information about private gun sales, authorized licensed gun dealers to access criminal offender record information, created new firearms crimes, allowed police chiefs a stronger role in granting long-gun licenses and provided for the state to submit more information to the National Instant Check System, among other measures.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo described the legislation as a "groundbreaking consensus bill" that was passed "in an extremely thoughtful manner." He told the doctors he believes the state's gun laws have saved lives, "but we must implore our federal government to do more."

"Until, I think, we do something at the federal level, I'm not sure, you know, how effective we're going to be able to really be," DeLeo told the News Service.

A spending bill Gov. Charlie Baker signed last November allocated $150,000 for an academic study examining the implementation of the 2014 gun law, including evaluations of the new licensing procedures and assessments of firearm tracing. That study is now underway and will be led by professor Jack McDevitt at Northeastern University, DeLeo said.

DeLeo said the study will "take a look to see what we've done and if we've truly made a difference."

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sun. So keep it civil.